Handcuffs are the solution to the FBI problems! Not for the criminals whom they cannot catch because they are not capable of solving their crimes, but for themselves, for the years of abuse of power, lying to the American people… pic.twitter.com/nVviEklIuq

A Russian hacker accused of stealing from Russian banks reportedly confessed in court that he hacked the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) and stole Hillary Clinton’s emails under the direction of agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

According to Russian news site The Bell, Konstantin Kozlovsky, a Russian citizen working for a hacker group called Lurk, confessed to hacking Clinton’s emails during a hearing about his arrest in August. An audio recording and minutes from the hearing were posted on Kozlovsky’s Facebook page, and their authenticity was reportedly confirmed by The Bell.

In a handwritten letter that also appears in a photo on his Facebook page, Kozlovsky admits to hacking the DNC on the orders of an FSB agent he called “Ilya.”

U.S. intelligence services have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and was involved in stealing emails from the DNC. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike concluded last year that the DNC’s emails had been breached by hackers associated with the FSB and Russian military intelligence.

“CrowdStrike stands fully by its analysis and findings identifying two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network in May 2016,” the company said in a statement.

Some of the hacked emails were released by WikiLeaks in July 2016, just in time for the Democratic National Convention. Reportedly, the CIA later identified Russian officials who fed material hacked from the DNC to WikiLeaks under Putin’s orders.

Clinton’s emails also have been the subject of multiple investigations into whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Donald Trump Jr. and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have admitted to meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 who promised that she had dirt on Clinton. Both men later claimed that the lawyer did not provide the promised material.

In this context, it is tempting to view Kozlovsky’s confession as the smoking gun needed to link the Kremlin to the hacks. Nevertheless, experts say there are reasons to be skeptical of the confession.

Many of the individuals implicated in Kozlovsky’s letter are currently on the bad side of the Russian government. For example, Kozlovsky identified his FSB handler as Dmitry Dokuchaev, a cybersecurity expert who worked as a hacker before joining the FSB.

Dokuchaev, who used the moniker “Forb,” has been linked to a group of hackers called Shaltai Boltai, or Humpty Dumpty, that published emails from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and other Kremlin officials. The Kremlin has accused him of being a double agent working with U.S. intelligence services.

Dokuchaev is accused in the U.S. of hacking about 500 million Yahoo email accounts in 2014. He appears on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Dmitry Dokuchaev, an officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, is accused in the U.S. of hacking about 500 million Yahoo email accounts in 2014. Reuters

Kozlovsky also names Kaspersky Lab official Ruslan Stoyanov, who is currently jailed in Russia on charges of treason for allegedly leaking information about Russian hackers to the U.S. government.

In September, the U.S. government ordered all federal agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab software from their networks, alleging that the company is linked to Russian spy networks. Kaspersky has denied that it is tied to the Kremlin, but experts say it would be almost impossible for a company as large as Kaspersky to operate in Russia without cooperating with the government in some way.

To some, it appears that Kozlovsky’s confession conveniently targets enemies of the Kremlin and provides Putin with an opportunity to claim that the hack was ordered by rogue elements.

“[The confession] puts the blame on a narrow group of people who are already in prison, and it moves the blame to an outsourced hack. This would allow Putin to pretend to be shocked that there are hackers in Russia doing this,” Mark Galeotti, a researcher on Russian crime at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, told Newsweek.

“The FSB is prone to employ outside hackers and gives them a choice of working with the FSB or go to prison,” he said.

What’s more, Galeotti said, it’s unlikely the confession letter would have been leaked from prison and added to Kozlovsky’s Facebook page unless someone higher up wanted it to be seen.

Meanwhile, some experts say that Kozlovsky likely had his own reasons for pointing a finger at the two men. Andrei Soldatov, co-author of the book the Red Web and an expert on Russian cybersecurity, said he believes Kozlovsky invented the story about his direction from the FSB for personal gain.

“I’ve been communicating with [Kozlovsky] for four months, and he has failed to give me any proof or answer my questions,” Soldatov told Newsweek.

Kozlovsky’s former hacking group has been accused of stealing more than $17 million from Russian financial institutions with the help of a computer virus. Stoyanov, who worked for Kaspersky’s investigative unit, was allegedly one of the individuals who helped put Kozlovsky and the rest of his hacker group in prison.

“He was put in jail by these guys so it could be out of revenge, or he wanted to make a deal with the FSB,” Soldatov said.

Once largely removed from the partisan political maelstrom of Washington, D.C., the FBI is now the focus of a fierce tussle by Republicans and Democrats.

Allies of President Donald Trump and pro-Trump conservative news outlets have launched a series of blistering attacks against Robert Mueller, former FBI director and now special counsel, appointed to investigate alleged ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

Former FBI Director James Comey speaks before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty

Republican anger has focused on Peter Strzok, a senior FBI official dismissed from the Russia probe after allegedly sending anti-Trump texts. For Republicans, the reports were yet more evidence that the Russia probe is a politically motivated “witch hunt,” as Trump has repeatedly tweeted.

Some on the right have also alleged Strzok may have stymied the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email account while secretary of state—one of the defining controversies of her 2016 presidential campaign. Controversy in particular stems from the suggestion in a CNN report that Strzok had a role in a drafting a July 2016 statement by former Director James Comey, in which Clinton’s handling of the emails was described as “extremely careless,” while in earlier drafts Comey used the phrase “grossly negligent”—a difference in phrasing with important legal repercussions.

“How did the Russia investigation start? Did Peter Strzok—did he start it?” Representative Ron DeSantis, a Florida Republican, demanded of current FBI Director Christopher Wray during an Congressional oversight hearing last week.

As the Russia probe closed round key Trump campaign officials, the president described the FBI as a “shambles” in a tweet in early December. This followed his statements in October that said the bureau may have conspired to fabricate the notorious Christopher Steele dossier, in which the British spy suggested Trump might have been ensnared by Russian intelligence.

Fearing Trump could try to use the criticism over Strzok as a pretext to sack Mueller, Democrats have hit back in a bid to turn the tables on Republican allegations of bias. Two House Democrats on Monday demanded the Justice Department hand over documents they believe could show “politically motivated misconduct” at the bureau meant to harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election chances, as well as leaks to a conservative website about the Clinton emails investigation.

Representatives Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, and Elijah Cummings, of Maryland, the senior Democrats on the House’s judiciary and oversight committees, wrote a letter to the Justice Department, saying the agency should look into the suggestion that FBI agents may have leaked information on the Clinton investigation to pro-Trump conspiracy site True Pundit in 2016.

The site published a number of stories alleging that pro-Clinton government officials blocked efforts to bring charges against the candidate, which the Democrats believe may have played a role in encouraging the FBI to re-open the investigation only weeks before the election. Clinton has blamed her loss on Comey’s decision to go public with the new investigation.

In their letter, reported in Politico, the House Democrats reference senior Trump allies, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, suggesting they may have been tipped off about the new investigation by anti-Clinton FBI insiders before it was publicly announced, giving new impetus to the foundering Trump campaign.

As the bureau negotiates arguably the most perilous political terrain it has encountered since Watergate, former senior officials have stepped forward to defend its integrity.

“Every FBI agent, and Pete [Strzok] is no different, knows how to investigate and follow the facts,” a former senior official told The Hill. “It’s astonishing. There’s a lack of understanding of how we operate as an organization—one, to think that we could not have political views and conduct impartial investigations, and two, to assume with a complex investigation like this that one person could change the outcome.”

Amid the attacks, FBI Director Christopher Wray sent a morale boosting message to staff early in December.

Wray said he was, “inspired by example after example of professionalism and dedication to justice demonstrated around the Bureau. It is truly an honor to represent you.”

“Keep calm and tackle hard” wrote Wray in the agency-wide internal email.

The handling of the Clinton email investigation is currently under review by the Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, an investigation Wray described in testimony to Congress last week as “very active.” He went on to say that politicized decisions had no role in the FBI.

“I am emphasizing in every audience I can inside the bureau that our decisions need to be made based on nothing other than the facts and the law and our rules and our processes and our core values and not based on any political considerations by any side of the aisle,” he said.

For critics it is precisely a misplaced sense of personal integrity that lies at the heart of the bureau’s current position. They argue that Comey’s belief in his own personal righteousness led him to abandon long-established protocols in the handling of the Clinton investigation—leaving the bureau open to accusations of bias and political meddling.

“I think he has a bit of a God complex—that he’s the last honest man in Washington,” a former Justice Department official who has worked with him told the New Yorker in May. “And I think that’s dangerous.”

Customarily the FBI does not disclose information about ongoing investigations, or do anything that may influence an election. Comey was reportedly reluctant to plunge the bureau into the center of a bitterly contested election in 2016—but was concerned of the consequences should it emerge that the agency had not revealed that Clinton, who was widely expected to win, was under investigation.

What Comey didn’t reveal at the time was that the Trump campaign was also under investigation for its ties to Russian officials—placing Comey in the unprecedented positon in 2016 of being in possession of information potentially severely damaging to either candidate’s prospects.

But with Trump the unexpected victor and with no end in sight for the Mueller probe—it is this investigation that seems likely will continue to act as a lightening rod for controversy.

One of President Trump’s personal lawyers called Tuesday for a special counsel to investigate alleged corruption at the FBI and Justice Department. Jay Sekulow, a member of the legal team counseling Trump on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging Russia probe, said Tuesday that a second special counsel should be appointed to focus on FBI […]

Let Mueller Keep DiggingWall Street Journal
At a moment when the special counsel’s team is busy calling its own fairness and impartiality into question, why would Donald Trump even think of firing Robert Mueller ? When the special counsel picked his team, almost half the lawyers he selected had…

Interpreted in the context of Mueller’s action in response to them, I say they are cause for pride. As long as those we entrust to enact, apply and enforce the law perform in this way, we can be confident about justice in our democracy.

We should always be proud of a government that does the right thing. And the special counsel did the right thing. He acted without hesitation not to whitewash anything or anybody, but to preserve both the integrity of the FBI and the investigation it is conducting and he is leading.

close dialog

Mueller’s response is in the spirit of what John Adams wrote over 200 years ago in his

According to Holder: “The FBI’s reputation is not in ‘tatters.’ It’s composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and do a great, apolitical job. You’ll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now.”

Yates said: “The only thing in tatters is the President’s respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better.”

As for Comey, he quoted his own June 8 testimony to Congress: “I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.”

In my years as a law enforcement executive, I have worked closely with the FBI on many occasions, and I can attest to the absolute accuracy of what Holder, Yates and Comey say about it. We are blessed as a democratic nation to have today’s FBI.

from its first years under J. Edgar Hoover, a leader who ultimately failed to uphold the supremacy of the law.

The FBI of today is an agency of supreme integrity. And while it was born far from perfect, its men and women have worked tirelessly to make the FBI the crown jewel of American criminal investigation and law enforcement. No comparable agency is more highly respected the world over.

Both as a citizen of the nation and its chief executive, Donald Trump should be proud of the FBI. After all, he

to be “rough” with the suspects they arrest. It was advice America’s police chiefs were quick to reject. They understood, even if their President did not, that upholding law and order means upholding the Constitution, no matter how you may personally feel about the suspect in your custody.

President Trump voices support for the police, especially when, like former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, they support his idea of law and order. When a US District Judge

of criminal contempt in defying a court order to end unconstitutional racial-profiling of Latinos in a campaign to arrest undocumented immigrants, President Trump nullified the law with a presidential pardon.

Was such a nullification the act of a true “law and order” President?

And when law and order gets uncomfortably close to home, when the inner circle of the White House, including members of the President’s own family, come under investigation by the special counsel, Donald Trump applies a different tactic. He attempts to tweet to “tatters” the very American institutions dedicated to law and order.

Our leaders and lawmakers must question the behavior of any agency when there is good reason to do so. But we cannot allow to pass unchallenged reckless attempts to denounce, demonize, or delegitimize an agency of government on the basis of allegations against one agent.

The current work of the special counsel is about defending the sanctity and legitimacy of the free and fair elections that are the heart and soul of our democracy. The President and the legislators who have spoken so destructively surely must realize that the only reason they learned about the alleged misconduct of Strozk at all is because the officials responsible for enforcing the rule of law and order in the conduct of the investigation discovered a problem, reported it, and acted promptly to fix it. Such is the great glory of a government of laws, not an agency “in tatters.”

“The facts point to a coordinated effort by some in the FBI to change the course of the Clinton investigation by leaking sensitive information to the public,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter with other senior Democrats.

Amid GOP attacks on the bureau, House Democrats say the FBI’s real prejudice was against their party’s 2016 presidential nominee.

Turning the tables on Republican charges that the FBI’s Russia probe is tainted by political bias, two top House Democrats are demanding Justice Department documents they say could reveal “politically-motivated misconduct” at the bureau meant to harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election chances, including potential leaks to a conservative website about the Clinton email investigation.

Days before Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is set to testify before the House judiciary committee, the two lawmakers are calling on Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to turn over any material showing FBI agents or officials revealing “animus” toward Clinton.

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“The facts point to a coordinated effort by some in the FBI to change the course of the Clinton investigation by leaking sensitive information to the public,” write Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the senior Democrats on the House’s judiciary and oversight committees.

The Democratic letter is a clear retort to conservative charges of bias against President Donald Trump within the FBI and in the office of special counsel Robert Mueller as both investigate Russia’s 2016 election meddling. Democrats fear Trump might use such charges as grounds for firing Mueller.

Amid broader complaints about the Justice Department’s interactions with Congressional Democrats, the letter from Nadler and Cummings specifically focuses on whether articles published last year by the “fringe conspiracy website True Pundit” might suggest anti-Clinton bias at the FBI.

The letter suggests that True Pundit — an anonymously written pro-Trump website — received information from FBI agents frustrated with the agency’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. They ask Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions whether the information provided to True Pundit may have influenced the FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton investigation a week before the election.

True Pundit published multiple stories last year claiming that the FBI did not bring charges in the Clinton case because senior officials there supported her campaign. The site claimed to have sources inside the government.

By fall of 2016, True Pundit had attracted the notice of the FBI’s most senior officials. New emailsreleased by the FBI, in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act request, show that the bureau’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, forwarded to then-director James Comey an Oct. 26 True Pundit story which insinuated that McCabe’s wife had been paid by Clinton’s political allies to boost a failed 2015 bid for Virginia state senate.

“FYI. Heavyweight source,” McCabe wrote to Comey. (Comey demurred, saying that the leak appeared to come from “lower-level folks.”)

Nadler and Cummings write also cited cases in which Trump allies seemed to be aware of impending FBI action in the days before Comey reopened the Clinton email probe. Their letter cites a comment by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — a Trump ally who acknowledges that he is in touch with FBI officials — that the bureau’s rank-and-file were “boiling” over the Clinton probe.

Giuliani also said shortly before Comey reopened the email probe that the Trump campaign “has a couple of things up our sleeves that should turn things around.”

The letter complains more generally that the Justice Department has favored Republicans by responding to their inquiries while ignoring Democratic ones, and by failing to share documents turned over to Republicans with Democrats on the same committees. The Democrats say the Justice Department provided more than 1,100 pages of documents to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee — without notifying Democrats, per standard practice.

“Unfortunately, we did not learn of your interactions with the Majority until after [Judiciary] Chairman [Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)] mentioned his efforts at last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray,” they wrote. “Your failure to treat us as an equal participant in this investigation, to simultaneously provide us with copies of that correspondence, or to produce these documents to our offices directly, is unacceptable and inconsistent with House rules.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman said previous document requests by committee chairmen were not typically forwarded to the committee’s ranking member unless the ranking member also submitted a request for the same information. Now that the request has been lodged, the department intends to send the material to the Democrats within 24 hours, she said.

The Democrats also demanded that DOJ turn over a response to their separate request about FBI bias by Dec. 21.

Meanwhile, House Republicans have pressed their own scrutiny of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email case. Last month, Goodlatte and Oversight Committee chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) demanded last month that the FBI produce documents related to its investigation of Clinton’s email practices.

At last week’s hearing, Goodlatte also requested details on how the FBI obtained a surveillance warrant for Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page last year.

mikenova shared this story from lacrossetribune.com – RSS Results in news/state-and-regional of type article.

State Sen. Leah Vukmir has slammed the FBI and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, declaring “something is rotten with the way justice is implemented in America today.”

Vukmir, R-Brookfield, who is running for U.S. Senate, made the comments in a Sunday column in the Wall Street Journal that also criticized state prosecutors and the state’s former ethics agency for their involvement in a now-ended secret investigation into Wisconsin Republicans.

Vukmir wrote that “unaccountable investigations and special prosecutors have become typical.”

“Take a look at the investigation of the president by Robert Mueller,” Vukmir wrote. “More than $3 million in taxpayer funds, and what has been accomplished? From Lois Lerner and the IRS to James Comey and the FBI, something is rotten with the way justice is implemented in America today.”

What state Attorney General Brad Schimel called the “John Doe III” investigation — to which Vukmir compared the Russia investigation in the column — did not result in charges.

The Russia investigation, since it began in May, has led to charges against four former members of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign: former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos; former campaign chairman Paul Manafort; Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates; and Trump’s former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

Flynn and Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to making false statements to investigators. Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty to charges against them.

Headed by Mueller, a Republican and former FBI director, the investigation is probing Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, including any coordination between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

Congressional Republicans generally have been split on the Russia investigation, while Democrats have said it must go forward.

Critics of the probe have become more vocal in recent days after Mueller removed FBI agent Peter Strzok from the investigation “after an internal investigation found messages he sent that could be interpreted as showing political bias” against Trump, CNN reported.

Neither Vukmir nor her opponent for the Republican U.S. Senate nod, Kevin Nicholson, immediately responded Monday to requests for comment on her column. Both are seeking to run against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2018.

The link between Crime, Terrorism, and Migration is very real!

“Washington Post”, get rid of your obvious and misleading liberal bias and face the truth. There is no doubt, in my very humble opinion, that in the present circumstances the borders (all of them, physical and virtual) have to be strengthened. “Wall or no wall”, this country has to protect itself from this pre-orchestrated, planned, hostile “invasion”. This issue, in a long term perspective, affects the demographic composition, and, inevitably, the mind, the soul, and the essence of this country. The comprehensive immigration reform is needed to bring the order and sanity into this system. It is a bipartisan issue. The best way to deal with it is to assist the future migrants at the places where they already are, be it their own or the third countries, and to help them with the adjustment and making the rational and orderly plans for emigration or non-emigration. It will also be much more efficient, including the comparative costs of the prospective interventions vs. non-interventions options for the migrants’ assistance.

In its present state, the dysfunctional US Immigration system does breed crime and definitely linked to it, the courtesy of the various Intelligence Services, among the other factors, the terrorist activity.

Do the methodologically correct studies to reveal these connections!

It is also difficult not to see the larger and the deliberate design (I wish I would know, by whom) which can be described by this imaginary phrase: “You, Americans, deal with your own problems at your southern borders, and we will make sure that you continue having these problems; and we: the Germans, the New Abwehr, the Russians, the “Europeans” will deal with our own problems at our southern borders, which includes the Middle East, Syria, Afghanistan”, etc., etc. Very straightforward and clear, almost German in its artificial simplicity and squareness, design. The Strasbourg attack was the latest demonstration of the “Terrorism – Crime – Migration Nexus“, as it was aptly described and defined.

The recent events (US withdrawal from Syria , (even if largely symbolic but telling: “А вас тута не стояло“), and the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan confirm this line of thought further. “Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualized along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fueled the anger of ideological groups.” This pattern is reported for Europe but there should not be any significant reasons to believe that this constellation of forces and factors and their dynamics are any different in the Western hemisphere. The Statistics should help to clarify the issues, not to obscure them. And the reporters might be tempted to spin the numbers into any direction they want, just like anyone else. Let the specialists, including the statisticians, comment on these matters. The incompleteness and narrowness of the press reports like the one linked above only throws more oil into the flames and allows if not justifies the Trump’s criticism of his press coverage as the “Fake News & totally dishonest Media” and the “crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!”. (What a horrible crime! Right out of the mouth of The TRUTH Teller In Chief!)As far as “the enemy of the people”, this might be the more debatable attribution. So far. (The New Abwehr’s control of the Global Mass Media notwithstanding.)

Exploring the Nexus in Europe and Southeast Asia by Cameron Sumpter and Joseph Franco Abstract Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualised along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fuelled the anger of ideological groups. In Europe, terrorist organisations have worked with and sometimes emulated organised crime syndicates through involvement in the trafficking of drugs, people, weapons and antiquities. In Southeast Asia, conflict areas provide the backdrop for cross-border drug trafficking and kidnap-for-ransom activities, while extremist groups both commit crimes for profit and target criminals for recruitment. Keywords: Crime-Terror nexus, organised crime, terrorism, migration, Europe, Southeast Asia –“Fake News & totally dishonest Media concerning me and my presidency has never been worse,” Trump said in the first of the tweets. “Many have become crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!”